CLICK TO REGISTER

Gregory Orr says we are each born with a natural talent for writing poetry in one of four temperaments: Story, Structure, Music, and Imagination. In this three-session workshop we will examine which temperaments come most naturally to you and play with techniques to deepen, vary, and broaden your instinctive style. Sessions 1 & 2 will explore each of the temperaments with examples to discuss and offer generative writing prompts for experimentation. The final session will include ways to refine and revise poems you’ve created.

Open to all poets who want to explore new approaches to developing their natural skills and prose writers who wish to apply these temperaments to their work or give writing poetry a try.

Session 1, July 23. Following a craft talk introducing Orr’s framework for the four natural temperaments, we will examine and discuss examples in work by various writers and then focus on how to examine the Story and Music Temperaments in our own writing. You will leave with generative prompts to develop and deepen your skills in these two temperaments.

Session 2, August 6. This session will focus on understanding and developing the Structure and Imagination temperaments using example pieces to guide our conversation. We will experiment with fun writing exercises which allows everyone to play with these two temperaments, with choices designed for beginner, intermediate, and advanced writers. The session will close with more generative ideas to try at home related to Structure and Imagination.

Session 3, August 20. In our last session we will reflect and share how Orr’s framework has been useful to us and then a craft talk will offer a dozen fresh and fun ideas to refine and revise work in process with time provided to try out one or two of these ideas  REGISTER HERE